A decision on Wednesday that the Bundestag’s 709 members get a pay raise next June when average wage trends are calculated drew criticism from a tax austerity lobby group as well as the outer edges of the political spectrum. The Federation of Taxpayers (BdSt), which leans toward supporting businesses, said the planned rise gave the “wrong signal” while Germany remained without a new federal government in the wake of its September 24 election. The system of automatized adjustments designed to answer criticism of self-service and first practiced in July 2016 gives a newly constituted Bundestag only three months into its...

A co-founder of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS acknowledged in a new court document that his company hired the wife of a senior Justice Department official to help investigate then-candidate Donald Trump last year. The confirmation from Glenn Simpson came in a signed declaration filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., and provided a fuller picture of the nature of Nellie Ohr’s work – after Fox News first reported on her connection to Fusion GPS. Her husband, Bruce Ohr, was demoted at the DOJ last week for concealing his meetings with the same company, which commissioned the anti-Trump...

President Donald Trump managed to endorse two different losing candidates in the same Senate race, a setback that is highlighting an experience deficit within the White House political team. […] Republicans in Washington and around the country say a bungled approach to the race — in which the president wagered his party’s moral authority with nothing to show for it — should serve as a wakeup call for the administration going into what is sure to be a challenging midterm election year. “This White House is not working on all cylinders,” said Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary to...

It turns out the government secretly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to resolve a sexual harassment case filed by Judicial Watch against a Florida congressman with a long history of unscrupulous behavior. The veteran Democrat, Alcee Hastings, is most famous for getting impeached by Congress as a federal judge following a scandal involving the solicitation of a $150,000 bribe in return for “favorable treatment for defendants in a racketeering case before him.” The disgraced judge was an unindicted co-conspirator, but there was enough evidence against him for Congress to boot him from the bench. Hastings is one of only...

The United States is a low-tax country. This is not a widely accepted point, granted. The share of Americans who say that their taxes are too high is at roughly 50 percent, a 15-year peak. Moreover, Republicans have sold their tax bill as an essential tax cut for AmericaÂ’s income-starved, tax-strangled families and businesses, promising to deliver $4,000 a year to the average family and huge boosts to corporate investment. Â“Today, America has one of the least competitive tax rates on planet Earth, 60 percent. Think of that, 60 percent higher than the average in the developed world. So our...

Republican Rep. Peter King called Steve Bannon a “disheveled drunk” who is “not the type of person” the Republicans need in politics during a Wednesday interview. On CNN, King responded to Doug Jones’ win in the Alabama Senate race by trashing Bannon, who campaigned heavily for Republican Roy Moore. “You know, I raised this not so much as a political issue but as a moral issue,” King explained. “This guy does not belong on the national stage–he looks like some disheveled drunk that wandered onto the political stage.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. District Court judge ordered Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Tuesday to turn over any potential evidence that could be material for when he sentences President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn. [SNIP] Flynn has agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation. Moscow has denied interfering in the election and Trump has denied any collusion. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan told the government in a filing to turn over any exculpatory evidence, known as “Brady” material, that could potentially help Flynn’s defense or information that is “material either to the defendant’s guilt or punishment.” The...

Credit six-term Republican Sen. Richard Shelby for Democrat Doug Jones’ shocking win in Alabama, senators from both parties said Wednesday. Shelby, Alabama’s senior senator and the state’s most influential official, publicly opposed GOP nominee Roy Moore and declared before the election that ”the state of Alabama deserves better” than a former judge accused of sexual contact with teenage girls decades ago. A former Democrat, Shelby, 83, announced weeks before the election that he had already cast an absentee ballot for another, unspecified Republican, even as President Donald Trump and other prominent state Republicans stood up for Moore. “I give the...

I’m going to keep this short and to the point. Pundits and political scientists will be dissecting the Jones/Moore election for years to come but there are three critical lessons for conservatives that we must recognize now. First, that the takedown of Judge Moore was decidedly not about vindicating newly-minted and highly suspect accusations of decades-old alleged sexual misconduct, it was about keeping a genuinely independent Bible-believing Christian conservative from joining President Donald Trump in the essential mission of draining the swamp in Washington D.C.. Judge Roy Moore would have been to the US Senate and to President Trump what...

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Republican said Wednesday that two of President Trump’s nominees for open seats on the federal bench will not be confirmed. One of them, Jeff Mateer, was nominated to serve as a federal judge in the Eastern District of Texas. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Republican said Wednesday that two of President Trump’s nominees for open seats on the federal bench will not be confirmed, just a day after urging the White House to “reconsider” them. U.S. Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, said that based on his discussions with the White House, the nominations of Jeff...

Conservative commentator Tammy Bruce, in a discussion about Alabama Republican candidate for Senate Roy Moore, said the Republican establishment want the party to lose the majority in the Senate so the Trump agenda fails. Bruce cited Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), who announced he did not vote for Moore, and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who donated to the Democratic candidate Doug Jones, as examples. "This is a test for the president," Bruce said Tuesday on FOX News' Hannity. "I think what you've seen with Shelby going against it. Jeff Flake, giving money to this guy. I think the Republicans in the...

Wall Street Journal: The Prairie State lost a record $4.75 billion in adjusted gross income to other states in the 2015 tax year, according to recently IRS data released. That's up from $3.4 billion in the prior year. Many of the migrants were retirees who often flock to balmier climes. But millennials accounted for more than a third of the net outflow in tax returns. While Florida with zero income tax was the top destination for Illinois expatriates, the Illinois Policy Institute notes that Illinois lost income and people on net to all of its neighbors – Wisconsin (6,000 people...

RUSH: We have a deal. It looks like we have a compromise here between the… (sigh) I’m not sure what I’ve been told is the right thing. The House and Senate are meeting on the tax bill, and if this is the conference committee…? Is that what’s been going…? (interruption) Okay, we have a deal in the conference committee. That’s a big deal. That means the House and Senate have agreed on one form of the bill. You know, the House passed their bill and the Senate passed theirs. And after that you have to go to conference between the...

(They can make your property worthless..and not pay you...) a good read...we are slaves) The government we live under does not resemble the one that is described in the Constitution. The principal reason for this is the power of federal regulatory agencies, which has grown explosively and is virtually unrestrained by Congress, the courts or even the president, who nominally controls the executive branch. The extra-constitutional administrative state now represents a grave threat to our liberties. The Supreme Court has an opportunity to begin the long process of restoring democratic, constitutional government in a case called Weyerhaeuser Company v. United...

The Hungarian government has received millions of notarised responses to its National Consultation on the ‘Soros Plan’ for mass migration, with the public rejecting it overwhelmingly. The consultation, which has received over 2.1 million notarised responses by post alone, was issued in order to gauge public support for the government’s determined opposition to the migrant crisis plan written by billionaire financier and open borders activist George Soros, who recently pumped $18 billion into what the Hungarian premier calls “bogus civil society organisations” to advance his goals. “Based on the results so far, practically every respondent said no to the fact...

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said on Wednesday that he is "relieved" GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore lost the Alabama race and won't be representing the Republican party in Congress. "Relieved? Yes that's a good word. I'm relieved and I believe a lot of Republicans are relieved that Roy Moore and some of his people aren't the face of the Republican party," he told reporters when asked if he was feeling any relief over Tuesday's election results.

COLUMBUS, Ohio Legislation making it a crime for a doctor to perform an abortion if the fetus might have Down syndrome has cleared its final legislative hurdle in Ohio and is headed to the governor. Several other states have considered similar measures, triggering emotional debate over women's rights, parental love and the trust between doctor and patient. The bill cleared the Senate in a 20-12 vote Wednesday. It was a priority for the state's largest anti-abortion group, Ohio Right to Life.

Rep. Mo Brooks was the true Trumpian candidate in Alabama, which is why I endorsed him in the primary (here, here and here). When the accusations against Roy Moore first arose, I proposed that the president make a deal to replace Moore with Brooks. Obviously, the GOP would be in a much better position right now if only Republicans had learned to hang on my every word. Instead, everyone did exactly the wrong thing, and they got the worst of all possible worlds. Trump should have endorsed Brooks in the primary, but he endorsed Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s pro-amnesty...

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein refused to say on Wednesday whether the FBI paid for the infamous Trump dossier. Rosenstein, who was grilled by the House Judiciary Committee, suggested that he knew the answer to the question, which was posed by Florida Rep. Ron DeSantis. “Did the FBI pay for the dossier?” DeSantis asked. “I’m not in a position to answer that question,” Rosenstein responded. “Do you know the answer to the question?” the Republican DeSantis followed up. “I believe I know the answer, but the Intelligence Committee is the appropriate committee…” Rosenstein began. DeSantis interjected to assert that the...

A new national survey conducted by Marist College's polling operation shows that a 52 percent majority of US voters believe the Republican tax reform proposal will negatively impact their personal financial situation. Â Less than one-in-three respondents think they'll benefit. Â This overwhelmingly inaccurate perception represents the fruit of Democrats' media-aided labor over recent weeks, as they've flooded the national debate with factually false assertions and ludicrous hysteria. Â The truth, as we've relayed on numerous occasions, is that nonpartisan analyses of the plan have concluded that on average, every income group will receive a tax cut -- including, if not especially, the...